Government employee privacy can make for a messy environment

A principal in the Forest Lake school district has been on paid leave since September and will remain on the payroll until his resignation is effective at the end of April.

While continuing to collect his $108,178 salary this school year, the educator "shall not perform any services for the school district," under terms of a separation agreement.

We hoped -- far too optimistically, it seems -- that changes in the state's Data Practices Act would minimize such situations in which taxpayer dollars are spent with no word about why.

Revisions in the law were prompted in 2012 by public outcry after a quarter-million-dollar separation payment from Burnsville-Eagan-Savage schools to a departing human resources director.

"It's a messy, difficult environment," Mark Anfinson, an attorney for the Minnesota Newspaper Association, told us. That's because "there are strong public values in collision here." On one hand, he said, is the importance of transparency and on the other the right of privacy for people -- in these cases involving personnel data of public employees -- who could be subject to false or groundless accusations.

"We shouldn't be surprised when the collision of those values occurs," said Anfinson, who also represents the Pioneer Press. "The solution is difficult to achieve."

Journalists want black-and-white answers from officials who see shades of gray. Taxpayers remain in the dark.

"There are huge sums paid for public officials not to do their job or to walk away," said Rep.

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Pam Myhra, a Burnsville Republican and a lead sponsor of the 2012 changes, passed unanimously by both houses.

"The taxpayers pay that bill," she told us. "They want to know" -- especially when it comes to spending precious school dollars that aren't benefiting students.

Some loopholes were closed in 2013, but if revisions Myhra sought had passed, "we wouldn't be having this conversation" this year, she said. "It would be in statute." She is open to pursuing the revisions again this session, but success would require a "change of heart" by Democrats.

Legislation, however, can do only so much, Anfinson suggests: "Anybody who works with the legislative process is humbled by the limits of the English language in terms of covering every possible contingency. You simply cannot do that in legislation."

It may be "more an issue of enforcement than amendment," he said.

Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota, is not so sure. In data privacy cases here, she said, if the language of the statute is ambiguous, then the tendency of the court is to give the records custodian the benefit of the doubt. Judges are "reluctant to read interpretations into the statute."

She notes that U.S. law in the field involves both the Federal Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act. "In Minnesota, we have one law trying to do both, and it's less successful in accomplishing that because there will be competition between openness and privacy."

From the school district's perspective, "the fact is, providing the information would be a violation of the law," spokesman Ross Bennett told us, noting times when "we would want to release information, just to be clear about what a situation might involve, and we are prohibited from doing so."

According to administrator Stacie Christensen, as of Tuesday morning, neither the school district nor the news media had approached the state's Information Policy Analysis Division, which provides data practices assistance to citizens, journalists and public officials. Such a move, which could yield a useful interpretation of the legislative language, would be a prudent step.

From the agency's experience in training and working with government units about data practices, Christensen said, "they generally really are trying to do the right thing, trying to read the law to comply with requirements. That being said, there are always situations where government may be using (the law) as a shield."

That happens, to the detriment of taxpaying Minnesotans, in the drive to keep public information private. It shouldn't.